Q Cam beautifully played, simply trusting, trusting Jesus, that is all.
Let's open our Bibles together please to Exodus chapter 20.
When God gave His people the Ten Commandments, He did not take a poll to see if it pleased
them.
He gave them the Ten Commandments because that's what they needed and because it was
an expression not of the cultural values of the day but of His own character.
Nations since then have flourished by basing their values upon the Ten Commandments.
George Henderson, a British commentator of another generation, quotes an unknown author
who said, like the granite rocks of the mountain on which they were given, these precepts form
the immovable basis of the moral life of men and nations.
The Ten Commandments are like a granite foundation for a society or for the life of an individual.
God knew when He imparted the Ten Commandments that the values represented there in these
moral and spiritual standards would, if followed, if followed, make Israel the greatest nation
in the world.
The Ten Commandments would build a strong society.
By the way, the greatest, most critical strength of any nation is not found in its military.
It is not found in its economic system.
It is not found in its political system.
The most critical strength of any nation is found in the morality of its people.
God knows that, and that's why He gave the Ten Commandments to the nation of Israel,
at least in part, so that they as a people would be strong.
The Ten Commandments reflect His holy character, and they resonate actually with the universal
moral order that God established when He created the world.
Obeying the Ten Commandments produces a harmony in one's life and community.
On the other hand, transgressing them produces discord and destruction.
Why?
Let me repeat.
Because the Ten Commandments reveal the character of God and thus the moral order that He has
woven into the very fabric of the universe that He has created.
There's great benefit in our study of the Ten Commandments in these coming weeks.
As a result, hopefully we will know God better ourselves.
But in addition to that, we will understand His righteousness and it will be brought into
a personal recognition of our need for a Savior.
We have to be clear regarding this and the Ten Commandments.
God did not give the Ten Commandments so that by obeying them we could somehow earn our
salvation.
God didn't give the Ten Commandments as a sort of stairway to heaven.
This is not a ten-step program to improve yourself so that God will accept you.
That is not the purpose of the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments in fact have just the opposite purpose personally, and that is to
destroy us in our tendency to depend upon self-righteousness and to show us we have
nothing in ourselves that can be called righteous compared to the righteousness of God.
The apostle Paul recognizes this of course when he writes Galatians chapter 3 verse 24,
and he says the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified
by faith.
The word tutor there means basically a nanny kind of responsibility.
He says the Ten Commandments are like a nanny delivering us to school.
The Ten Commandments deliver us to learn about justification by faith.
And we understand that Christ died for our sins, rose again from the dead, and we believe
in that message and we trust in that Savior.
And as a result of it then the law has done its work.
It's brought us to the end of ourselves and to the Savior so that we can find salvation
by grace.
Now after establishing the singularity of the worship of the people of Israel, they
were to worship the Lord their God, he now instructs them how they are to worship the
Lord their God.
I'm going to pick up the reading in verse 4 of Exodus 20.
You shall not make for yourself an idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or
on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.
You shall not worship them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations
of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep
my commandments.
What we're going to see today is this, that how we worship, how we worship is as important
as whom we worship.
There is a way to worship God and there are many ways not to worship God.
I want us to notice first the statement of God's command.
It really has three parts, look at them briefly.
He says you shall not make for yourself an idol, that's the first part.
An idol is something that is carved out of wood or stone or formed by forging some sort
of metal or precious material.
It is the forming of a figure that is stood up and declared to be divine.
He says you shall not make for yourself an idol.
Number two, he says you shall not worship them.
The word worship means you shall not bend before them.
You shall not make yourself prostrate before them.
You shall not invoke the name of God and fall down before this idol.
And he says thirdly, you shall not serve them.
That is, you shall not worship them by means of sacrifices or of ceremonial rituals of
some sort.
Now let me just express for a moment what this command is not about.
This command is not condemning art, whether it be sculpture or painting or pottery or
any form of art.
Nor does it forbid the representation of something.
In fact, God himself ordered the representation of the cherubim in the fabric of the tabernacle.
There are a few rather extreme religious sects that would take this command to mean that
you should never have your picture made or that you should never put a picture in your
home of anyone or that you should never have art.
That is not what this command is about.
What is God's point here?
Because he certainly has a point.
It is that we are to make nothing that is to represent the true and living God to us.
We are to make nothing that we would call an aid to the worship of God.
Now I use that phrase because that is a phrase that has been given to me in times past as
I have discussed with people why they have statues in their churches.
And they say these are aids to worship God.
That is specifically what is forbidden in the second commandment.
We are not to make anything that is to represent the true and living God to us.
What God says here is not merely a repetition of the first commandment.
It builds upon it.
It is a command against worshiping the true and living God, which is commandment number
one.
Making any form or likeness of something or someone, we are not to do that.
I am going to take just a moment to turn with you, if you will please, to Deuteronomy chapter
four where we have an elaboration upon this.
This is forty years or so later as Moses speaks to the children of Israel.
And he reminds them of this very occasion that we are studying in Exodus twenty.
He says in verse ten, Deuteronomy four, Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God
at Horeb, when the Lord said to me, assemble the people to me, that I may let them hear
my words, so that they may learn to fear me.
And all the days they live on the earth, and they may teach their children.
And you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain.
The mountain burned with fire to the very heart of the heavens, darkness, cloud, and
thick gloom.
And so he recounts this awesome physical manifestation of God at Mount Sinai.
Then the Lord spoke to me, or to you rather, from the midst of the fire.
You heard the sound of words, but you saw no form, only a voice.
So He declared to you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, that is, the
Ten Commandments.
And He wrote them on two tablets of stone.
And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments that you
might perform them in the land where you are going over to possess it.
So watch yourselves carefully, since you did not see any form on the day the Lord spoke
to you at Horeb from the midst of the fire, lest you act corruptly and make a graven image
for yourselves in the form of any figure, in the likeness of male, female, animal, a
bird, anything that creeps on the ground, or a fish.
And He warns them about using the stars for worship in verse 19.
But He says, the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace from Egypt to
be a people for His own possession as today.
Verse 23, so watch yourselves, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God which He
made with you, and make for yourselves a graven image in the form of anything against which
the Lord your God has commanded you.
For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.
And so God clearly means in the second commandment that we are not to make an image representing
Him.
Why is that?
Because God is Spirit, and He has no material form.
That is the theological reason that is behind this.
Everything that is made is inherently limited, it's finite, it's created.
Therefore it is a false representation of the God who is infinite in every respect and
who is uncreated.
Kyle and Delich, two commentators in the Hebrew language say, whenever Jehovah, the God who
cannot be copied because He reveals His spiritual nature in no visible form, is worshiped under
some visible image, the glory of the invisible God is changed.
Or Jehovah changed into a different God from what He really is.
A.W. Pink, another commentator says, the design of the commandment is to draw us away from
carnal conceptions of God and to prevent His worship being profaned by superstitious rights.
Jesus said that God desires worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, not
by forms, not by images, which do in fact appeal to the carnal sensibilities of a person.
They do appeal to that religious flesh that is in us.
We like something tangible, but God forbids it because it cannot possibly represent Him
and His majesty and glory.
Now, there's a practical reason besides a theological reason for God giving this commandment.
A practical reason for the nation.
When one nation destroyed another nation in those days, they would seek to destroy any
images or idols or temples to the gods of that destroyed people.
This had a terribly demoralizing effect.
Do you remember when the Philistines stole the Ark of the Covenant and they put it in
their temple to Dagon, the false god, and this silly god kept falling on its face?
It wouldn't stand up.
And finally, they got so discouraged by the situation that they sent the Ark back to Israel
and said, take this thing.
Now, why?
Because they were demoralized.
Because their god kept falling down before the Ark of the Covenant, the living God.
Cyrus Gordon is quoted by John Davis in his book, Moses and the Gods of Egypt.
He says, it is worthy noting that the defeated nations on seeing their idols dragged off
and smashed tended to become demoralized and lose their identity.
Assyria, Babylonia, the Seleucids in Rome could not destroy the Jewish religion partly
because God and His people's allegiance to Him were incorporeal and therefore indestructible.
What he's saying is that their god was not represented in an idol that these conquering
nations could destroy.
He was invisible.
He was spiritual.
He was in their hearts.
And so he goes on to say, the second commandment thus paved the way for the historic survival
of Yahwism, that is the worship of Yahweh.
So that was a practical reason that God gave to the nation, but there's also a practical
reason for the individual.
It's personal.
And it's this, the false belief systems represented by the idols lead to false behavior.
We become like what we worship.
And so God wanted to take away those, the tendencies of Israel to put up idols like
the rest of the nations because the worship of idols inevitably led to moral and spiritual
corruption and abominations before God.
And so there was a personal reason and it is that false gods tend to remake men in their
image.
And so God wanted the false gods removed, no idols.
Now I want to talk about the statement of God's character that we see and God tells
us what His character is going back to Exodus chapter 20.
The statement that we see that begins in the middle of verse 5 actually refers back to
both of the first two commandments, the worship of the Lord their God.
And he explains why he gives this commandment as to how God is to be worshiped.
He says in the first place that He is a God who is jealous.
That's the kind of a God He is.
That's His character.
He's a jealous God.
Now when we see the word jealous, we immediately jump to some negative conclusion because we
see jealousy so often mentioned in the Bible as sinful and fleshly.
And it is coming out of our corrupt natures.
But also is there not a righteous jealousy that can be observed?
For example of a husband or a wife or his or her spouse if there's a challenge there?
Yes, that is a good kind of jealousy.
We ought to be jealous for our marriages, jealous for the covenant that we've made in
marriage with that very special person that God has brought into our life.
It is that kind of jealousy in its human dimension that we see in its perfect revelation in God.
This adjective jealous is found six times in the Old Testament only.
There are two other similar words in addition to that that are found that are translated
jealous.
But it's not a common word in the Old Testament.
But it always refers to God.
And what it's saying is that God is not a tolerant God.
Now I'm sorry if you're politically correct.
You're going to struggle with this a little bit.
You need to know something.
God is not a God who is tolerant of what offends Him.
God is not tolerant of what offends His holiness.
You see God is holy.
He is different than we are.
That's why He makes the commandment.
Don't make an image that represents me because you can't do that.
I am holy.
I am so different than you.
I am above you.
So don't make an image like that.
That makes me jealous.
I am not tolerant of that because it offends my holiness.
It offends who I am.
Again I quote Kyle and Delich who say that the Lord quote, will not transfer to another
the honor that is due to Himself nor tolerate the worship of any other God.
You see and that's the point.
Isaiah thundered in the 42nd chapter of his book the word of the Lord.
I am the Lord.
That is my name.
I will not give my glory to another nor my praise to graven images.
God is jealous that His glory, His holiness, His, if I may use the term, His absolute uniqueness,
His uncreatedness, His self-existence as the supreme eternal personal being.
He is jealous that all of that not be perverted by some idol that is to represent Him.
God is jealous.
We learn that about His character.
Secondly, we see that God punishes.
He says, I visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children.
He is a God who punishes.
There is a warning here to Israel and to all people.
The heat of His anger is felt by those who hate Him.
Now what does it mean to hate God in this context?
Well it means not to do what He says.
What did He say to do?
Don't make an idol.
So to hate God here means to make an idol.
And God is saying that those who follow idols, those who make idols, will be punished to
the third and the fourth generation.
Now this does not mean that God punishes the children for the sins of their parents without
any fault of their own, or that a child must repent for the sins of his parents or be bound
by the sins of his parents.
But what it does mean is this, that false worship is very likely to be transferred to
succeeding generations, by example, so that the children tend to fill up the sins of their
forebearers, their ancestors.
Then when judgment finally comes, when the cup of iniquity is filled, as it were, it
is the result of that generation's sins, but also the preceding generation's sins that
led them to it.
That's what God is saying here.
We don't have time to look at illustrations, but let me just give you a couple of texts
to look at.
Genesis 15 verses 13 to 16.
Leviticus 26, 39.
Daniel 9, 16.
You will see this principle in action.
Now there's a third statement regarding God's character that he gives us here.
It is that he is a God who shows loving kindness.
Now if the preceding one was a warning, this one is an assurance, and it is directed toward
those who love him.
He says, I show loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments.
So again, love means to worship God the right way, to worship the right God in the right
way.
Let's put it that way.
God is kind.
He is loyal in his love to thousands of generations of those who obey him, who love him.
G. Campbell Morgan says, if a man sweeps the idols away and gets into living connection
with God, worshiping him without anything between, the result will be that his child's
child will most likely so worship.
So you see, just as false worship tends to follow from generation to generation, so does
true worship.
Only much more so.
The warning is to three and four generations, but the grace of God abounds far beyond that
to thousands of generations, he says, is this positive tendency for the worship of the true
God to go on.
Seems to me that this is something of an Old Testament statement of that principle of Romans
where Paul says, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.
Now I want to close with some applications for our lives in this second commandment.
I want to begin by saying this, how we worship makes a difference to God.
Boy, do we need to write that in our hearts.
How we worship makes a difference to God.
Worship has been trivialized, writes Douglas Beier, because people have no awareness of
how it matters to the great Yahweh.
We are so casual in our approach to God, often thoughtless in the way that we come to worship
and present ourselves to him in worship.
I can hear someone say, well, you know, as long as the person is sincere, isn't that
what counts?
Well, certainly sincerity counts for something, but I remind you that Cain was also sincere.
And God rejected his worship.
If you look at the Old Testament, you will find that worship of God is a perilous business.
Moses' nephews, Nadab and Abihu, who were priests, were killed by God because they took
coals from the wrong altar and offered them to God, and incense that was offered, and
apparently also at the wrong time of day.
Now, there is some indication because of what follows there in Leviticus chapter 10 that
they were also drunk when they did this.
But that isn't the reason they died.
They died because they worshiped God in the wrong way.
Uzziah was fearful that the ark of the Lord was going to fall off the cart.
He touched it, and what happened?
God struck him dead immediately because no one was to touch the ark of the covenant.
And Aniass and Sapphira in the New Testament were hypocritical about what they put in the
offering plate.
God struck them both dead.
Here in Exodus, in the 32nd chapter, there were 3,000 people who died in one occasion
simply because they made a golden calf to represent Yahweh.
But God had said, don't do this.
Now, I'm not saying that God is going to strike us dead if we don't cross all of our T's
and dot all of our I's, just perfect.
God is a gracious God.
He is merciful.
He is loving.
But folks, let us remember that the God that we come to church to worship is this same
Yahweh that we see in Exodus chapter 20.
And He is a God who is a jealous God, and He cares how we come to worship.
What ought this to say about our attitudes as we come?
If we come to church and we were mad at somebody and we have a grudge against another person,
and we have a sour attitude about something that's happened, what are we to do before
we get to church?
How ought our hearts to be prepared before we come in here and lift our voices and choruses
singing to God?
What ought it to say about our demeanor in church?
I don't think it means that we have to sit rod straight and stone-faced in church because
God is holy as they did in the colonial days.
But it does mean that our demeanor ought to be respectful of the holy presence of God.
Sometimes I wonder when we're singing if we realize what we're singing.
We'll sing a chorus, for example, and we say, I lift my hands unto your name, and we're
standing there like this.
Well, it might be better for me not to sing that phrase than to sing it and be disconnected
and to lie about it.
There's an integrity problem there.
I don't want to press that too hard, but you understand my point, that we need to see that
our demeanor is appropriate in worship.
How ought it to affect our dress?
Did you know that God was very particular how people dressed who served Him in the priesthood
in the Old Testament?
God was very particular about that.
God hasn't told us exactly how we ought to dress.
We shouldn't dress like the priests of the Old Testament, but we ought to come to church,
I think, in our best and not come waddling in and cut-offs and thongs.
Why?
God cares how we worship.
You see, how we come to worship says something about what we think of God.
Now, the best somebody has may be cut-offs and thongs, and if that's the case, that's
fine.
And certainly there are cultures where that is the case.
That's exactly how they dress, and that's fine, but that's not our culture.
Secondly, I want to say how we worship exposes whom we love.
If we love God, we will worship Him as He commands us to.
We'll put aside our tendency to say, well, I prefer this, or I prefer that.
No, we will say, here's how God wants me to come, and I will come and worship God that
way.
I love God when I keep His commandments.
Now, obviously there are allowances for cultural variety, but there is no allowance for anything
that compromises the truth of who God is in His character.
There's no compromise there.
And the third thing I want to say in closing is this.
How we worship affects future generations.
First, our own kids.
If we come to worship ill-prepared, insincere, or hypocritical, don't think for a moment
that that will not translate to our children.
It will.
On the other hand, if we come to worship with our hearts right with God, if we come to worship
sincerely, if we come in spirit and in truth, then the blessing of God will multiply to
our children and to our children's children and for generations to come.
That's what God is saying here.
Still applicable today.
How we worship God affects future generations.
How we worship is as important as whom we worship because we become like what we worship.
And that's why even the aged Apostle John, writing with his old hands, that's why he
says as he closes out the book of 1 John, little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Let's pray.
Father, our prayer is that you will help us to see the idols in our lives.
Because we often imagine that this commandment does not apply to us because we don't set
up gods of stone and wood.
But Lord, help us to see the invisible gods that too often are there and which cloud the
worship of you and your glory, which cause our lives eventually to be perverted and twisted
because we become like what we worship.
Oh Lord, free us, I pray, from idolatry.
Free us from any kind of idolatry that our worship of you may be sincere and right.
And with our heads bowed, just allow the Spirit of God to focus your mind for a moment on
some idol that may be upon the throne of your life.
And whether that be some attitude or a carelessness about worship, a demeanor, a failure, whatever
it be, rip that idol off the throne right now and break it in the presence of the Lord.
Let us stand together.